WHY THE OLD TESTAMENT IS NOT THE WORD OF GOD
http://www.religioustolerance.org/inerran6.htm
The Christians have a book called the Bible which is supposed to be the word of
God, in other words, it was authored by God through men. It consists of the Old
and New Testaments. True Christians teach that the Bible is infallible for God
can't make mistakes.
They are forced to admit that the Bible contains parts which are unclear. There
are far more interpretations of the Bible among Christians than there are
religious sects. This is because of the lack of clarity. The Christians have
books in defence of the Christian lie that there is no error in the Bible but
say some passages are obscure. One of them is When Critics Ask, (Norman Geisler
and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992) which admits that there are
unclear parts in the Bible (page 18, 40). Yet these books try to make out that
there are no errors in the Bible. The authors only admit the obscurity for they
are forced to and will look stupid or deceitful if they don't admit it. But lack
of clarity proves that the Bible makes errors for lack of clarity is an error.
It is just as serious as a contradiction. A contradiction says one thing and
says the other as well. So it tells you nothing. So does lack of clarity.
Christians have been told this for centuries and they refuse to hear. Also, if
the Bible contradicts itself about say when Jesus did something it proves that
it is accusing God of making a mistake. It is doing that just as much if there
is a lack of clarity. Lack of clarity contradicts the Bible claim that God does
not make mistakes or that God is almighty and all-knowing. Contradiction in the
Bible does that too. Lack of clarity proves the Bible is not the word of God.
The Bible is supposed of speak of three, Father and Son and Holy Spirit and yet
it says there is only one God. That is hardly clarity and is a possible
contradiction. The Christians speculate it means there is one it as regards God
and three whos or three persons in one God which may make no sense for they
admit that they don't understand this.
It says a lot about Christians when they don't see the Bible saying that God
commanded the Jews to stone adulterous people to death as in capital punishment,
commanding Jesus to accept crucifixion and a degrading death, saying people
deserve to suffer for all eternity in Hell and the Bible declaration that
doubting God's word is the ultimate sin as errors. That is heartless. No truly
good person pretends that these are not errors and that the Bible saying Abraham
did such and such and then saying the opposite would be an error!
If a religion is not fanatical then how you behave when you practice it will not
be significantly different from what you would do if you did not believe. The
Bible is fanatical. It forbids lying under all circumstances and you cannot live
if you go by that. Jesus said that we must not swear at all but mean yes when we
say yes and mean no when we say no meaning that there should be no need for
oaths meaning lies are always wrong. The reason lies are wrong is because they
oppose the truth meaning that if somebody says something wrong it is your duty
to correct them no matter what the cost will be if lying is wrong. Most of the
lies are silent ones when we know our silence will be taken as assent to
something that is untrue.
Being infinitely wise and unlimitedly powerful God cannot err and would not need to lie. Yet
God lied in the Bible albeit only the once. He told Abraham that he wanted him
to slaughter his son Isaac though he didn’t in Genesis 22. Believers ignore this
for it contradicts the rest of the Bible, which certainly looks down on all lies
even ones that are told for a serious reason, and the Bible certainly made a
slip-up here. Genesis is a book of the Torah which lies at the heart of the Old
and New Testaments and which they revere as their foundation in authority. When
it accuses God of lying there is no point in even considering if the other books
are the word of God.
The Bible says that when a prophet gives the word of God as God spoke it there
will be no error in it and even one error or false prediction demands that the
prophet be stoned and his words rejected (Deuteronomy 18). By implication then a
prophet should make prophecies of the future for anybody could claim to be a
prophet while making no predictions. Yet the Bible canonised the writings of
Moses who gave no sign of having prophetic ability and Jesus failed the test
simply by resting his own prophetic authority on Moses’. The prophecy of Jesus
about Jerusalem was constructed from the Old Testament and even if Jesus made
the prophecy it could have been something a true prophet said which was
incorporated into the gospels. We have no proof that Jesus made it. When God is
so strict about revelation, true scripture that prophesies should be able to be
proven to have been written before the event. There is no conclusive proof that
the Book of Daniel for example preceded the prophecies it made. In that case,
how could it qualify as real scripture?
The Old Testament treats men who made false prophecies as real prophets despite
Deuteronomy 18 stating that even if a prophet is always right in what he
predicts he is to be rejected as an anti-God if he makes one false prophecy. The
Bible God says you need at least two independent and reliable witnesses before
you can believe a claim and where are the affidavits backing up the divinity of
the books that made it into the Old Testament?
Most of the prophecies are vague which itself indicates that the prophets are
merely guessing and predicting that God is telling them stuff. For example,
Zechariah failed to make even one convincing prophecy though he tried hard
enough in his book. None of them has been fulfilled and it seems scandalous to
listen to a prophet who has not been proven by his words all coming true in the
light of Deuteronomy 18 which has such a strict but logical method of telling
God’s prophets from the fake prophets. As for the one about the Messiah going
into Jerusalem on an ass and another animal anybody could fulfil that especially
if they ignore the context which says the world must be conquered by God’s
people first while when Jesus went into Jerusalem on a donkey it was the people
of God who were conquered by the world.
An example of an outright false prophecy is Ezekiel’s prediction about Tyre
(26). This prophecy is vaunted as a fulfilled detailed prophecy in almost every
Christian fundamentalist apologetic work. The prophecy predicts that the armies
of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon will attack Tyre, which was a city built on a rock
on the middle of the sea and which had branches on the coastline, and kill the
inhabitants but since he did not throw the remains of the city in the sea the
Christian assume that that bit is about Alexander the Great and his men who came
along decades later in 322 BC and who made a causeway of the rubble of the city
in the sea. First of all there is no reason to think the prophecy means to
change from Neb to Alexander so it doesn’t. Grammatically, words like they refer
to the group you mentioned last so the usage of they in the passage indicates
Neb and his men only. Second Tyre was near the sea and Tyre was the name of the
city on the rock with the coastline suburb. Ezekiel meant that the city on the
rock would be thrown into the sea for he stressed the bareness of the rock and
that it would be bare forever. He did not have Alexander’s causeway in mind but
just a demolition of the city and commonsense said that if the city was
destroyed it was unlikely to be restored. Alexander when he cleared away the
rubble built his own towers and fortresses on the site of the rock so it was not
bare.
Christians have no business boasting about the Old Testament prophecies that
were fulfilled for with the many prophets there would have been it would not
have been hard to select the scriptures of those who got it right by chance and
accept them as part of the word of the Lord. But the truth is the prophets were
anything but impressive.
The Bible predicts that Edom will be desolate as far as Teman, totally
unpopulated, conquered by other nations and by Israel, shall have a history of
blood, will be populated by wild animals, stop trading and its bad luck will
astonish all who see it (page 288-9, Evidence That Demands a Verdict). First of
all Israel believed that evil godless nations would fare badly and that Israel
would win for it was the people of God. Edom was a depraved and deadly nation
and had loads of enemies who were happy to destroy it. The wild animals would
naturally set in on its collapse and they were never short in that region.
Naturally trading would stop and the fall of any nation is astonishing. The
prophecies are totally unimpressive for the prediction of the fall of Edom had
nothing to do with seeing the future but the Hebrew superstition that God would
bring temporal disaster on evil nations. Everything else is just a deduction
from that. Jeremiah could have copied Isaiah when both said Edom was doomed so
why should we consider Jeremiah a true prophet when he could have been a
plagiarist? So if a Catholic naturally believes that God will dethrone an
antipope in favour of the true pope and this happens as she forecasts does that
mean she is a prophet? Of course not. The fact that weak prophecies like that
turn up in the Bible is a sure sign that the prophets were trying to dupe their
hearers.
The prophecy of Ezekiel that nobody would dwell in Egypt which God would reduce
to an “utter waste” for 40 years has failed (chapter 29). The Christian solution
is that the prophecy was conditional though there is no hint of that in the
passage so it is unconditional. Christians tell the same lie to excuse the
failure of many Bible prophecies.
Nahum might have been able to guess that if Nineveh were built on rivers that
floods would happen and perhaps enemies would deliberately flood the city. It is
admitted that he thought it was easy for enemies to flood the place (page 301).
Would it have been any wonder if Nahum had guessed that Nineveh would not be
rebuilt after the destruction when it was a sitting duck and had got such a
severe deal at the hands of its enemies thanks to its watery location? Nahum
knew that Nineveh had many rivers passing through it so that explains his
prophecy as guesswork. Nineveh was told to stockpile water when Nahum forgot
that it wouldn’t need to do that if rivers flowed through it.
The prophecies of Isaiah (13) and Jeremiah (51) saying that Babylon shall be
destroyed are unimpressive for it was the city of a hated empire and all empires
fall. Isaiah knew that when this happened it would not be re-inhabited because
since it was such a strong city – it had 90 foot thick walls - its enemies would
make sure it would be no use to anybody ever again. It was in the middle of the
desert which hardly advertised it as a potential home that should be restored.
It was too expensive to rebuild. Jeremiah knew that nobody was going to take the
stones for their own use so no wonder he predicted that.
Even fundamentalist Haley’s Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible admits that the
Bible often makes numerical mistakes. One passage gives one number and the
number is different in a parallel account. This is blamed on copyist’s errors
even when there is no evidence that an error was made. Any ancient, not to
mention some modern, book could be proclaimed the word of God if you can blame
the copyists. Why not the Book of Jubilees which isn’t part of the Bible? The
contradictions in names in the Bible is also explained the same way. This is
totally unfair without evidence for they have the nerve to say the Bible never
contradicts itself. How do they know?
In 1 Samuel 15, the prophet Samuel gives Saul the word of God commanding Saul to
lead Israel to destroy utterly the people of Amalek and leaving nothing left not
even the babies or the cattle. Saul did as God said but didn’t do away with the
cattle and the sheep and for that God vowed to fire him as king of Israel. The
war was purely motivated by revenge for there was no need to destroy all the
babies too. God said he wanted to get his own back on the people of Amalek for
fighting Israel when Israel came out of Egypt many years before. Christians say
that we are God’s property and he has the right to decree that people can kill
us. If a plausible prophet then comes along and persuades people to kill for his
God then lay it at their door. The Bible is evil.
Judges 1:19 tells us that God could not drive out mountain people for the sake
of his people because of their chariots which were made of iron. Elsewhere, God
is said to be almighty. Christians solve this contradiction by saying that God
was unable for a mysterious moral reason clear only to himself. Perhaps leading
the people to defeat people with strong chariots would have made them proud (55)
but there is no hint of that in the text. The straightforward interpretation
must be taken and it blames the chariots. God just couldn’t help. He didn’t have
the power.
The Bible says millions of Israelites would have died in the wilderness. Where
are the bones? The Israelites buried their dead deep for cleanliness and because
burial was thought to be most important so the bones should still be there.
In recent years, some of the contradictions between the Bible and historians and
archaeology have been solved. In the light of Deuteronomy 18, God could not let
this take so long. He forbids acceptance of anything as scripture that errs
meaning anything we are reasonably sure is in error. If he did not want the
people of the past to believe the Bible then he does not want us to believe
either.
God says in the Bible that rabbits chew the cud. Christians “solve” this error
by saying rabbits only look as if they do. They would not go that far in
defending an error in another religion’s scripture.
Christians see a gradual unfolding of “truths” in the Bible. God revealed only
as much as man could take. So he gave the Jews the idea that he was one person
and the Christians the idea that he was three. So if somebody writes a new
scripture today and it is full of immoral doctrines and full of strange ones he
can use that excuse for his errors. A Bible that delivers truth piecemeal is a
helping of religious quackery.
The Old Testament is not the word of God. Thank goodness!
It Ain’t Necessarily So, Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew
Sturgis, Headline Books, London, 2001
When Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992
